It is a mark of being young in age or young in experience to point fingers and demand answers -- to zero in exclusively on deficiencies and cry havoc -- when wisdom would, instead, acknowledge realities for what they are and play to strengths in such a way as to make weaknesses irrelevant. Yet the Homeland Security enterprise, being young, insists on learning such lessons the hard way, hence the post-Christmas frenzy to subject our institutions and airline passengers to yet another overhaul laced with traveler torments and fiscal folly under the banner of defending air travel from yet another failed attack.
What does the Christmas Unexploded Underwear Bomber have in common with the Shoe Bomber and the Anal Cavity Assassin who tried to kill a Saudi official earlier in 2009? All of them failed. The latter failed particularly badly, as he managed to blow himself into several parts without inflicting much of any injury to his target. The Shoe Bomber did the least damage. The Underwear Bomber did burn himself, however. So, of the three, the most destructive proved to be the one who did not attack commercial aviation and, instead, had to contend with such screening as his meeting hosts imposed. What are some lessons we refuse to learn about the other two cases?
The first is that passenger screening is having some net security effect even when it is applied imperfectly, which the real world will cause to happen despite the best of intentions. Security screening is forcing would-be attackers to inconvenience themselves and to devise plots which, at the end of the day, are remarkable mainly for their high failure rates. After all, even some 9/11 attackers were thwarted by an alert, improvised counterattack on United Flight 93. So the second, unheralded but significant lesson is that an unsubsidized, unchampioned, and politically neglected component of security is proving to be highly adaptive and devastatingly effective in countering new attacks as they arise. This component is the passenger responder, the person next to you who is no longer content to ignore ambient threats and wait for the experts, real or perceived, to do all -- or even any -- of the dirty work or heavy lifting.
The passenger responder realizes that we all fly together or die together. This class of individual deserves recognition, encouragement, lionizing, and whatever information or training our protective bureaucracies can impart. Indeed, this ignored component of homeland and fellow traveler security deserves to be touted as our most robust, resilient, and adaptable answer to anything that Al Qaeda and other adversaries have to throw at us. Properly or even adequately promoted, the phenomenon of the passenger responder would become a significant deterrent and a symbol of our strength and resolve.
Instead, we starve this resource of attention in favor of anemic witch hunts, pointing the accusing finger of blame, and opening the door to the next spending spree on end-all and be-all security devices or ceremonial sacrifice of defenders who "let us down." What do such measures say to a watchful world of adversaries and neutrals? They only reinforce the message that we are weak, vulnerable, uncertain, overreactive and ... just asking to be struck again.
- Nick Catrantzos
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.